Kala

June 5, 2023
Walsh’s engrossing if overstuffed story of lifelong friends revolves around a mysterious death in the tourist town of Kinlough, Ireland. In 2003, a group of teenage friends is shattered when one of the six, Kala Lannan, disappears amid circumstances that are only revealed near the end of the novel. Three of the others reunite 15 years later after Kala’s bones are discovered at a local building site. Joe Brennan, once Kala’s boyfriend and now a famous rock star, has recently returned to open a bar. Helen Laughlin, who was Kala’s best friend and is now a struggling investigative reporter in Canada, learns of the discovery while home for a wedding and determines to solve the mystery of Kala’s death. Mush, the glue of the group, still works at his mother’s café, and after Kala’s remains are found, his two teenage cousins go missing. Walsh unpacks individual events through multiple perspectives, and the novel thrives when Joe, Helen, and Mush grapple with conflicting memories of the past. There are a few too many red herrings, and some woolly hints of a temporal reality in which the characters see versions of themselves at different ages, yet the emotional pull of Walsh’s core trio steadies the ship. Despite some wobbles, this is hard to put down. Agent: Lucy Luck, C&W Agency.

July 1, 2023
The setting is beautiful--an idyllic seaside village in Ireland--but shocking brutality and corruption lie just beneath the surface, as author Walsh slowly reveals in mesmerizing fashion in this remarkable debut novel. Kala Lannan's mysterious disappearance at the age of 15 has never been solved. Now, 15 years later, three of Kala's old friends reunite in their hometown during a family wedding, each with their own complicated relationship to Kala, and each determined to put the past to rest. But the sudden disappearance of teenage twin sisters just before the wedding, along with law enforcement's discovery of Kala's remains in the woods, sends them on a dangerous detective mission. In their search for the missing girls and the truth about Kala's fate, the friends stumble upon ugly truths about the town, themselves, and their families. Part mystery, part thriller, and completely unpredictable, this is one to recommend to readers who enjoy the darkly atmospheric, character-driven stories of authors like Jane Harper and Anne Cleeves.

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Starred review from June 1, 2023
Irish author Walsh makes an assured debut with this gritty heartbreaker of a thriller. On the west coast of Ireland sits the tourist town of Kinlough, where, in 2003, six teenage friends--Kala, Aoife, Helen, Aiden, Joe, and Mush--are enjoying the "summer of [their] lives," daring each other to race their bikes down a hill across a busy main road, exploring first love, and building tight emotional bonds. When 15-year-old Kala, the gang's charismatic but troubled leader, disappears in November, the friends' relationships fracture: "There was no clear point where you made the decision to let your lives unbraid themselves from one another." Fifteen years later, three of the friends meet up again. Hard-edged Helen, now a freelance journalist living in Canada, has reluctantly returned home for her father's wedding to Pauline Lyons, Mush's aunt. Joe, a self-absorbed rock star with a drinking problem, is back to relaunch a local music venue with a summer residency, and the solitary Mush, self-conscious about his facial scars, has never gone anywhere, preferring to sit in his mother's cafe drinking beer and watching the summer visitors. But the discovery of Kala's bones at a building site and the disappearance of Mush's 16-year-old twin cousins propel the trio to reconsider their past in a dangerous search for the truth. Skillfully blending the psychological complexity of a literary novel with the propulsive pace of a thriller, the author juggles three disparate points of view (including a second-person perspective) and two timelines with masterful flair. His striking prose ("hair pineappled into an elegant mess") is flavored with colorful Irish slang ("beor," "craic") without becoming twee. The handy cast of characters clarifies the family relationships, but at times the convoluted plot is confusing as it builds to a haunting conclusion. Part heartfelt coming-of-age tale, part brutal Irish noir, this is a spectacular read for Donna Tartt and Tana French fans.

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